


There’s No Reason for a Panic Attack

by mithrel



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Community: schmoop_bingo, Fluff, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Podfic Welcome, Schmoop, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-19
Updated: 2010-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:05:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The <i>Enterprise</i> is being refitted, so the crew has a week’s leave on Earth. For the schmoop_bingo prompt: "Thanksgiving: meeting the parents."</p>
            </blockquote>





	There’s No Reason for a Panic Attack

_If things don’t change we’ll have a week’s refit on Earth at the end of next month,_ Sulu finished the letter to his parents.

He’d learned to add that disclaimer the first time they’d had leave scheduled on Earth. The flagship of the Fleet was always in demand, and usually when a disaster came up it was the _Enterprise_ who was sent to investigate and/or deal with it, regardless of how long the crew had been out or whether they had leave coming up.

But he didn’t think anything would come up. After two years out he’d noticed a pattern to the crises ( _Bad things come in threes,_ he thought sardonically) and they’d filled their quota for the next few weeks at least.

***

The response to his letter was short. _That’s wonderful! You can spend Thanksgiving with us!_

Sulu blinked, trying to reckon up the date; the time-distortion caused by being in warp most of the time and the fact that when they did make planetfall the year and day were always different lengths, had thrown him off.

As near as he could tell, it was sometime in mid-October on Earth. He shrugged. Thanksgiving or not, he’d be glad to see his parents.

***

“Hey,” Sulu said to Chekov when he met him in the corridor on the way to the turbolift. “You have plans for your leave?”

He shrugged. “Going home to see my family.”

Sulu nodded. “Me too. Hey, are you spending the entire week with them?”

“I was planning to, why?”

“Well apparently it’s Thanksgiving. If it’s OK with my parents why don’t you come over for the day? You can spend the rest of the leave with your family. Unless Russia has some holiday at the end of November you want to be there for.”

Chekov shook his head. “There’s Unity Day at the beginning of November, but nothing at the end. But why do you want me to come along?”

Sulu sighed. “Pavel, I’ve been trying to get you to meet my parents for a year, remember?”

Chekov picked at his sleeve, a nervous habit Sulu hadn’t seen much in the past year or so. “But–”

“Pavel,” Sulu repeated for the thousandth time, “they won’t care that I’m with a guy. They live in _San Francisco,_ for goodness sake!”

“But–” Chekov started again.

“I’m not asking to be introduced to your parents. I know they don’t know we’re together.” That was the one thing that annoyed him about Chekov’s family. They were extremely old-fashioned, and since Pavel was an only child, he was expected to continue the family line. It had been like pulling teeth getting Pavel to admit he was attracted to him, despite the fact that he’d been blatantly obvious, a teenager with a crush. He was terrified of letting his parents down.

Sulu hoped that meeting his own parents would help.

Chekov sighed. “Alright.”

Sulu grinned. “Great! I’ll message my family and ask if you can spend Thanksgiving with us.”

***

His parents’ reply to his question if Pavel could spend Thanksgiving with them was typical. _So we finally get to meet this mysterious Pavel you’ve been going on about for nearly a year?_

Sulu blushed. It wasn’t _that_ bad. He might have gushed a little when he and Pavel first got together but _honestly,_ they made him sound like a thirteen year old girl!

 _I did not ‘go on about him,’_ he protested. “ _Oh, but you did,_ ” he heard his mother reply in his head. “ _I’ve never seen you so smitten.”_

To shut out the voice he continued, _He’s going to be spending most of the leave with his family, but he’ll stop by on Thursday so you can meet him._

***

They docked above Earth on schedule, and most of the crew beamed down. He and Pavel were both junior officers, so they were on the last shift.

“You have the address?” Sulu confirmed as they headed for the transporter room.

Pavel nodded. “It’s on a PADD in my bag.”

Scotty was at the transporter controls. After the crew was gone he and some other volunteers from the engineering section would stay aboard and help with the refit.

He grinned at them. “Have fun, lads! Make sure you sober up before you beam back aboard.”

Sulu rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure.” Chekov hardly ever drank, and not just because he was a conscientious officer. Sulu might have a drink or two on special occasions, but not often, and Scotty knew that.

“See you Thursday,” he told Chekov, and the navigator nodded as the transporter took hold.

***

The first thing Sulu did on materializing was take a deep breath. There were no smells in the recycled air of a starship, and he almost reeled for a moment. He was bombarded with smells, all of them familiar: the salt smell of the Bay, the varied seafood smells of Fisherman’s Wharf, the mingled cooking smells of the restaurants nearby.

He reoriented and headed for the shuttle port.

It was only about a five minute trip by shuttle and he was staring at his own house. He took in the sight of the one-story ranch, the acacia tree in the yard. It hadn’t changed in two years.

He picked up his bag, headed down the walk and rang the bell.

His mother answered. “Hikaru!”

He had to drop the bag as she hugged him. He’d been taller than her for three years, but breathing in the scent of her shampoo made him relax. He was home. He didn’t have to worry about what the captain or Mr. Spock would think of his performance (“ _Have you disengaged the external inertial dampener?_ ” had echoed in his dreams for two years, never mind that that mistake had saved them.)

She pulled away. “Well, don’t stand in the doorway, come inside!”

“Your father’s still at work,” she said as she closed the door. “Transporter operators have been working overtime for the past week with people coming home to see their families.”

“Is Hiroko here?” He didn’t expect it; the chances of her getting leave at the same time as him were almost nonexistent.

His mother shook her head. “She was here two months ago. They were mapping the…” she paused, “Adelphi system?”

Sulu thought. “The Adelphous system?”

“That was it.” She beamed. “My daughter the captain of a survey ship, and my son on the flagship of the Fleet!”

“Mom,” Sulu protested, flushing. “I didn’t decide where they sent me!”

“Still, you did well enough that they thought you could do it!”

Sulu sighed and resigned himself to her boasting for the next week.

***

Sulu woke up early on Thanksgiving, his system finally adjusted. For the first few days he’d either overslept or woken up at three in the morning. He wandered out to the kitchen and saw that his mother was at the stove already. He rummaged in the fridge and found some yogurt and granola.

When he’d finished eating he cleaned up the table. “Do you need any help?”

His mother smiled. “I’d love some, thank you.”

So he set out ingredients for stuffing while his mother got the turkey ready.

“Don’t come on too strong when Pavel comes over,” Sulu warned her.

“What do you mean?”

Sulu gathered his thoughts. “He’s…he’s shy. Well, not ‘shy’ exactly. His parents don’t know about us.”

“He hasn’t told them?”

Sulu shook his head. “I’ve tried to persuade him that he should, but he’s afraid to. They’re traditional and want him to have a family.”

“He can have a family!”

“Not the kind they want. Even if he did have children using surrogates or genetic engineering it wouldn’t satisfy them.”

His mother frowned. “Alright, we’ll do our best to make him comfortable.”

***

The doorbell rang at about two o’ clock.

“I’ll get it,” Sulu said. His mother was watching the rice, and anyway he figured Chekov would bolt if a stranger opened the door.

Chekov stood on the doorstep, carrying a bag.

“Hey.”

He fidgeted. “Hello.”

“You have any trouble finding the place?”

Chekov shook his head, shifting from foot to foot.

“Come on, I’ll show you where you can put your bag.”

Reluctantly, Chekov followed him. He darted a nervous glance into the living room, where Sulu’s father was reading. “Where are you sleeping?” he blurted out when they got to the guest room.

Sulu paused. “Down the hall. If you want to be in the same room as me…”

“No, no, that’s fine!”

Sulu nodded to himself. That’s what he’d thought. His mother had wanted to put them in the same room, but he’d talked her out of it.

“Come and meet my mother.”

Chekov hesitated again, so Sulu hauled him toward the kitchen.

His mother smiled when she saw him. “You must be Pavel. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Sulu,” Chekov managed after a moment

She laughed. “Kaiya, please.”

He nodded. “Kaiya.”

“So you’re the navigator on the _Enterprise_?”

Sulu smiled. If there was one way to get Chekov to relax, it was to mention the _Enterprise._ Immediately he started talking about the missions they’d been on, his classes at the Academy, how incredibly lucky he was to have been assigned to her.

His mother listened as she stirred the rice, occasionally making a comment.

***

That night they all sat down to eat. Since there were only four of them there wasn’t that much food, but there was still plenty of variety. Turkey, rice, cranberry sauce, corn on the cob, rolls…

“Have you celebrated Thanksgiving before, Pavel?” Sulu’s mother asked.

He nodded. “At the Academy. We don’t have anything like it in Russia.”

“So you’re the navigator?” Sulu’s father asked.

He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Tell him about the time you beamed me and Captain Kirk out of free-fall,” Sulu suggested.

“It was nothing!” Chekov protested.

“Like he–” Sulu caught himself. “It was so! If it weren’t for you Captain Kirk would be a splat on the rock, and so would I!”

Sulu’s parents were looking at him expectantly, so, blushing furiously, Chekov told them about Nero drilling into Vulcan, and how Sulu, Kirk and Olson had parachuted onto it and disabled the drill. He told them how Sulu’s chute had been damaged, how Kirk had leapt off the platform after him.

“So they were falling and the crewman on duty couldn’t get a lock. I knew I could, so I ran down to the transporter room and computed the formula to beam them back.”

Sulu’s father raised his eyebrows and whistled. “Hikaru’s right, it’s not nothing! I couldn’t’ve done it! I dunno if there is anyone else who could!”

“Hiroto, you’re embarrassing him!” Sulu’s mother scolded him. “Don’t mind him, he’s just bitter that he wasn’t fit enough for space duty.”

“I was plenty fit! They just needed transporter operators here!”

“Which do you operate?” Chekov asked. “It isn’t the one we came in on.”

He shook his head. “I work across the Bay, in Oakland.”

“What type of transporter is it?”

The following conversation was filled with technobabble, his father complaining about substandard equipment and Chekov sympathizing, then telling him about the _Enterprise_ ’s transporters. Sulu caught his mother’s eye and she grinned.

***

After about an hour they all leaned back in their chairs.

“It was wonderful, Kaiya,” Chekov said.

“Yeah, you really outdid yourself,” Sulu said, and his father nodded.

“Thank you, boys,” his mother said, smiling at the compliments.

“Do you need any help cleaning up?” Chekov asked.

“Oh no, Pavel, you go to bed, you must be tired. Hikaru can help me.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Chekov nodded and headed down the hall.

Carrying the leftovers to the kitchen, Sulu asked, “Well?”

“Well what?” his mother teased.

Sulu rolled his eyes. “ _Well,_ what do you think of him?”

“He’s a lovely boy, Hikaru. I only hope his parents don’t take it too badly when he tells them.”

Sulu nodded. “But he does seem more relaxed now. He might think you don’t even know we’re together, since no one mentioned it.”

His mother pursed her lips. “You’re right. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he knows tomorrow.”

***

The next day they had to beam back up to the ship. Chekov had come into Sulu’s room and was watching him pack; his things hadn’t been as scattered, so he’d finished packing quicker.

“So what do you think of my parents?”

Chekov hesitated. “They’re nice.”

“So you’d be happy having them as in-laws?” Sulu teased.

Chekov paled and Sulu sighed. “Pavel, you need to learn how to take a joke!”

“Is not funny!”

Sulu sighed. “Whatever. But, really, you like them?”

Chekov nodded. “Yes. I do.”

***

When they left, Sulu’s mother hugged him. “Come back as soon as you can!”

“I will,” he promised.

She turned to Chekov and kissed him on the cheek. He looked startled. “You’re welcome back anytime too, Pavel. I’m glad Hikaru’s found someone who complements him so well.”

“I…ah…thank you,” Chekov stammered.

“Come on, we better get going if we’re going to make the next shuttle,” Sulu said, rescuing Chekov from his embarrassment.

He nodded. “Thank you for the meal, M–Kaiya.”

She smiled. “It was my pleasure, Pavel.”


End file.
